My husband and I had a miscommunication about the bathroom. For a guest bathroom, what we had was large. But did I mention it was pink? Not a clear pink, but a salmon color straight out of “Mad Men.”

I liked the pink bathroom because it was one of the few rooms in our house that told its age, and it aged well. The large farm sink and bathtub (both pink) and modern-style cabinets were in good condition.

The separate shower, however, was falling apart. Water leaked out of the shower pan and saturated the floor, and it was devolving into a hazmat issue.

The question was, do we remodel just the shower or the entire bathroom? I voted for keeping the pink and remodeling just the shower, but my husband insisted on taking the bathroom down to the studs.

Except now that the bathroom remodel is almost complete and thousands of dollars later, he tells me he would have liked to have kept the pink. Seriously? We need to talk more.

What was a shower along one side wall is now an oversized one occupying the entire backside of the room. It was a large room to begin with, and expanding the shower made sense.

I had cared for my terminally ill brother, my son rides Motocross and hubby had a knee replacement a few years back. We could have used a wide wheelchair-accessible shower more than a few times. Plus, we plan to get old.

But now when you look into the bathroom, what you see is a shower. It’s large, with white subway tiles and an expanse of clear glass across the front.

Two west-facing awning-style windows occupy the upper back wall inside the shower. Which gets me thinking about orchids.

Steve Asbell, author of “Plant by Numbers” (Coolsprings Press) and blogger at therainforestgarden.com, has come up with an intriguing idea for growing orchids and air plants inside the shower.

“I lived in an apartment with only a balcony to garden on,” he said recalling when he got the idea. “Orchids love humidity, and we had a bathroom with a bright window.” It just worked.

His technique is simple. You take a wire shower caddy with suction cups, suction it to the wall of the shower and plant it with orchids and/or tillandsias.

Orchids, tillandsias and bromeliads are epiphytes, plants that grow without soil. Many of these come from humid tropical rainforests and grow high in the canopy of trees.

A steamy shower with natural light can be an ideal environment for these kinds of plants.

Asbell removed his orchids from their plastic pots and tucked them into the mesh of a plastic loofah-like shower sponge, surrounding the roots with a layer of orchid bark. You could use an alternative like burlap or cheesecloth to make a planting pouch.

Then he tucked the plants into the wire shower caddy and finished off the arrangement with a few moisture-seeking tillandsias. Twist ties keep the orchids secure in the caddy.

His orchids couldn’t be happier with warm steam and partial sunshine. He hits them with shower spray once a week and feeds them during the growing season.

“It’s fascinating to watch the orchid roots grow and wrap themselves around the caddy,” he said. “It’s the same thing they do in treetops.”

Once the orchid has secured itself to the caddy with roots, it creates its own environment and gets what it wants from the moisture and light available.

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